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REVIEW   OF 

"  An  Inquiry  into  the  Genuineness  of  the  Manuscrii^t  Correc- 
tions   in  Mr.  J.  Payne  Collier's  Annotated  Shakspere, 
Folio,   1632  ;    and  of  certain  Shalcsperian   docu- 
ments    likewise    jyu^j/ished     by   Mr.    Collier." 
By  N.  E.  S.  A.  Hamilton.     (Bcntley.) 

ALSO, 

THE   REPLY  OF 

MR.  J.  PAYNE  COLLIER 


{Reprinled  from  the  {Lcndon)  Atlicnaum  of  the  18th  of  February,  18G0.) 


'0  dear  discretion,  how  his  words  are  suited! 
Tlie  fool  hath  planted  in  his  memory 
An  army  of  good  words  ;  and  I  do  know 
A  many  fools,  that  stand  in  better  place, 
Garnish'd  like  him,  that  for  a  tricksy  word 
Defy  the  matter." 


3?RI]SrXEr)    FOR   PRIVATE   C1TICXJ1L.AJT10N 

BY 

CHA11LES   W.  FREDEIIICKSON. 


NEW  YORK. 
18G0. 


!A 


5^ 


THIS  REPRINT 

IS 

DEDICATED 

TO  THE  ADMIRERS  OF 

MR.    J.    PAYNE     €OI.  L.I£R, 

IM   THE 

UNITED  STATES, 

BY 

C.  ^W.  FREDERICKSOIsr, 

WHO  APPRECIATKS  HIS  CHARACTER  AS  AX 

HONEST    MAN, 
ACCOMPLISHED    SCHOLAR, 

AND    A 

WORTHY  ELUCIDATOR  OF  THE  TEXT  OF  SHAKESPEARE 


M195187 


An  Inquiry  into  the  Geyiuineness  of  the  Ma7iuscript  Corrections  i?i 

Mr.  J.  Payne  Collier's  Annotated  Shakspere,  Folio,  1632 ;  a7id 

of  certain  Shaksperia)i  Documents  likewise  published  by  Mr. 

Collier.     By  N.  E.  S.  A.  Hamilton.     (Bentley.) 

In  another  part  of  our  impression  the  reader  will  find  Mr.  Collier's 

answer  to  the  charges  contained  in  this  'Inquiry' — charges  against 

his  literary  honesty  and  personal  honour  which  every  man  of  sense 

and  delicacy  will  grieve  to   find  dated  fpjm   a  Department   of  the 

National  Library.     We  have  read  the  accusation.     We  have  read 

the   reply      In   the  fair  and  candid  spirit  which  alone   beseems  a 

literary  investigation — the   spirit  which,  in   perfect  courtesy   and 

perfect  fearlessness,  seeks  solely  to  arrive  at  truth — we  shall  now 

compare  with  the  reader  our  impressions  of  this  most  singular  and 

painful  case. 

"  Department  of  Manuscripts,  l^ritish  Museum,  January,  IS60" 
— such  is  the  date  borne  by  this  'Inquiry.'  We  will  not  dwell  on 
the  lamentable  fact  of  the  great  national  library  being  made  the 
scene  of  such  a  debate.  Our  opinion  on  that  point  remains  the 
same.  The  British  Museum  was  founded,  as  we  think,  for  a  nobler 
end  than  to  serve  as  a  literary  Old  Bailey  ;  its  staff"  of  excellent  offi- 
cers should  never  be  degraded  to  the  functions  of  public  prosecutors. 
But  having  now  to  deal  with  concrete  facts,  not  with  abstract  notions 
of  right  or  wrong,  the  reader  will  pass  that  by  as  of  less  immediate 
interest.  Character  is  at  stake — honour  that  is  dearer  to  a  man 
than  life.  When  character  is  in  question,  no  man  need  pause  to 
discuss  the  point  of  taste.  Enough  to  ascertain  whence  the 
accusation  comes.  Of  this  there  is  unhappily  no  doubt.  Every 
act  in  the  indictment  against  Mr.  Collier  bears  the  seal,  so  to  say, 
of  a  Department  of  the  British  Museum.  The  writings  date 
from  the  British  Museum.  The  writers  serve  in  the  British 
Museum.  Mr.  Arnold,  Mr.  Maskelyne,  Mr.  Hamilton — all  the 
young  gentlemen  who,  in  newspapers  and  magazines,  have  for  eight 
months  past  been  lifting  up  their  voices  against  Mr.  Collier — are 
employed  in  the  British  Museum. 

The  unanimity  of  these  Museum  gentlemen  is  not  more  clear 
than  their  companionship.  But  the  mere  fact  of  their  unanimity, 
pleasant  in    itself  will  not  impress   the  world  outside  the  Museum 


gates,  A  common  sentiment — a  common  habit — a  common  con- 
viction— often  pervades  a  regiment  or  a  corporation.  The  Tenth 
don't  dance.  The  Blues  have  a  pet  pattern  in  plate.  The  Royals 
read  Trinity  House  has  its  own  traditions  about  shoals  and  tides. 
Guildhall  delights  in  turtle.  Manchester  loves  free  trade.  On 
other  points  the  members  of  these  corporations  will  fight  each  other 
— on  these  they  will  fight  the  world.  Uncle  Toby  would  trace  the 
unanimity  at  the  mess  to  a  taste  or  a  twist  in  the  colonel.  Man  is 
imitative.  Twenty  fellows  gape  because  one  gapes.  In  bodies 
open  to  the  control  of  a  leading  mind,  opinion  is  a  habit ;  the  value 
of  the  whole  mass  of  opinion,  counting  by  hands,  is  not  more  than 
that  of  the  single  head.  Should  the  colonel  swear  yon  cloud  is 
very  like  a  whale,  his  testimony  to  the  truth  of  such  a  picture 
will  not  be  strengthened  by  the  additional  and  identical  oaths  of 
his  twelve  hundred  rank  and  file. 

In  the  case  of  this  Manuscript  Department  corps,  the  colonel 
who  gives  the  law  to  his  subalterns  is  not  hard  to  find.  The  corps, 
indeed,  seize  every  occasion  to  point  him  out.  In  every  note  to 
newspaper  and  magazine,  conspicuously  again  in  the  grateful  Pref- 
ace to  this  'Inquiry,'  appears  the  name  and  figure  of  Sir  Frederic 
Madden.  Sir  Frederic  is  the  Ctcsar  of  this  band.  Mr.  Arnold 
tells  us  that  Sir  Frederic  is  a  palaeographer  of  such  vast  renown  that 
his  mere  word  would  suffice  to  authenticate  or  condemn  the  Cor- 
rected Folio.  This  may  be  valiant ;  but  is  there  no  text  which 
warns  us  when  discretion  may  be  the  better  part  of  valour  ?  Caesar 
was  fond  of  hearing  his  legions  shout  before  his  car  ;  but  the 
humourous  rogues  who  bawled  to  please  him  sometimes  bawled  to 
please  themselves  ;  and  then  they  let  out  truths  which -Caesar,  big 
as  he  was,  would  rather  have  kept  in  the  privacy  of  his  tent.  Mr. 
Hamilton  is  even  less  discreet  than  his  brother  ensign.  He  plucks 
the  veil  from  his  hero.  Sir  Frederic,  we  learn  from  him,  has  been 
busy  in  this  business — Sir  Frederic  set  the  'Inquiry'  afoot — Sir 
Frederic  helped  it  with  advice  and  with  private  papers — Sir 
Frederic  made  the  first  discoveries  of  the  "fraud" — Sir  Frederic 
sanctioned  and  encouraged  the  investigations  which  bring  this 
scandal  on  the  world  of  letters.  In  one  place  we  are  suffered  to 
peruse  his  private  notes.  In  another  place  we  are  told  the 
story  of  this  Shakspeare  investigation.  The  "  Annotated  Shak- 
speare,"  says  the  Preface,  "  was  placed  in  Sir  F.  Madden's  hands 
by  the  Duke  of  Devonshire.  His  independent  examination  of  it 
completely  convinced  him  of  the  fictitious  character  of  the  writing  of 
the  marginal  corrections  ;  and  this  conclusion  he  freely  communi- 
cated to  inquirers  interested  in  knowing  it.  The  correspondence 
between   certain   pencil  marks  in  the  margins   with  corrections  in 


ink,  first  noticed  by  myself,  led  him  to  a  closer  examination  of  the 
volume,  and  to  the  detection  of  numerous  marks  of  punctuation  and 
entire  words  in  pencil,  and  in  a  modern  character,  in  connexion 
with  the  pretended  older  writing  in  ink  ;  instances  of  which  were 
subsequently  found  to  occur  on  nearly  every  page.  It  was, 
moreover,  owing  in  a  great  measure  to  Sir  Frederic  Maddens' 
encouragement  that  I  was  originally  induced  to  bestow  that  atten- 
tion to  the  subject,  which  has  developed  the  inquiry  to  its  present 
results." 

Now  we,  too,  should  allow  to  Sir  Frederic  Madden  a  considerable 
share  of  learning  and  experience  in  his  own  department  of  palaso- 
graphy  ;  yet  with  certain  purchases  for  the  Manuscript  Depart- 
ment in  our  mind,  we  should  most  assuredly  hesitate  to  place  him 
high  above  all  his  fellows.  Europe  may  have  many  a  worthier  son 
than  he.  We  absolutely  reject  the  idea  that  his  more  word  suffices  to 
authenticate  or  condcnm  a  document.  Sir  Frederic  may  sufter  him- 
self to  be  entreated  of  the  minor  deities  of  the  Bloomsbury  Olympus 
to  assume  the  god  ;  but  he  will  hardly  brave  the  laughter  of  man- 
kind by  affecting  to  give  the  nod.  This  is  not  a  (question  to  be 
settled  even  by  a  pala!ographic  Jove.  Sir  Frederic's  view  is  known ; 
yet  the  dispute  is  not  ended.  Of  the  many  gods  in  the  British 
Museum,  there  is  none  so  mighty  and  so  awful  as  to  calm  the  dis- 
cord in  the  literary  spheres. 

The  Reader,  having  found  out  tcho  are  the  assailants  of  Mr, 
Collier,  will  now  seek  to  learn  wh//  they  are  his  assailants.  The 
circumstances  compel  incjuiry.  A  great  literary  attack — to  all 
appearances  conducted  by  one  who  declines  the  responsibility  of 
failure  while  accepting  beforehand  any  small  gleam  of  credit  which 
may  grow  out  of  success — and  carried  forward  by  the  forces  of  a 
public  institution,  which  from  its  neutral  and  gentle  purpose, 
should  be  scrupulously  guarded  against  the  suspicion  of  bi  ing  used 
for  personal  and  party  ends — provokes  some  scrutiny  into  the 
motive  power.  M/ii/  should  these  officers  of  the  British  Museum 
assail  Mr.  Collier  ?  Every  one  will  ask  this  question.  Every  one 
will  get  such  answer  to  it  as  he  can.  We  know  that  in  starting 
such  a  query,  a  Header  may  be  nearing  perilous  ground.  It  is  not 
his  fault.  If  there  be  peril,  it  is  not  of  his  seeking.  A  very  start- 
ling question  comes  before  him.  The  names  of  four  gentlemen  of 
the  British  Museum  are  put  in  evidence  against  Mr.  Collier ;  other 
"friends  and  colleagues"  of  that  establishment  are  cited  to  the  same 
effect  in  mass  Indeed,  the  whole  body  of  scholars  and  gentlemen 
serving  in  the  National  Library  are  made — unconciously,  and  with- 
out their  own  consent,  we  verily  believe — to  appear  as  witnesses. 
To  appear  for  what  ?  For  the  purpose,  as  it  seems  to  us,  of  hinting 


8 

away  the  cliaractcr  of  an  aged  scholar — of  insinuating  charges  of 
fraud  and  forgery  against  a  writer  of  blameless  life — of  inferentially 
suggesting  accusations  so  vile  and  gross  that  a  man  of  honour  would 
scarcely  whisper  them  to  his  own  heart  until  the  conclusive  proofs 
were  in  his  hand.  When  this  is  the  array  of  things  on  one  side, 
an  impatient  Header  will  be  driven  to  inquire  if  there  be  any  con- 
ceivable reason  why  the  officers  of  the  British  Museum  should  wage 
this  cruel  war  on  Mr.  Collier  ?  Are  they  free  from  the  suspicion  of 
private  passion  ?  Is  there  cause  for  this  hostility  other  than  the 
love  of  truth  ?  Has  there  been  previous  provocation  of  their  wrath  ? 
Do  they  owe  Mr   Collier  any  ancient  grudge. 

A  Reader  making  these  inquiries  will  be  grieved  to  find  that  the 
officers  of  the  British  Museum,  however  gentlemanly  and  scholarly, 
however  much  above  suspicion  of  personal  motives  in  their  ordinary 
acts  and  writings,  are  very  far  from  standing  above  suspicion  of 
personal  hostility  in  the  particular  case  of  Mr  Collier.  The  young 
gentleman  who  signs  the  Preface  disclaims  personal  motives.  Wc 
believe  he  does  so  in  good  faith.  The  motives  of  a  man  are  often 
most  abstruse,  and  the  sources  of  love  and  hate  are  sometimes 
hidden  even  from  those  whose  blood  they  warm  and  whose  pens 
they  guide.  Grudge  descends.  In  corporations  as  in  families,  the 
Vendetta  has  a  long  life.  It  is  a  matter  of  public  notoriety  that  in 
the  course  of  an  active  literary  carreer,  Mr.  Collier  has  had  more 
than  one  sharp  brush  with  officers  of  fhe  British  Museum  ;  that  by 
his  opposition  and  by  his  writings  he  has  given  very  deep  offisnce 
in  that  institution.  There  was  the  Royal  Commission  of  Inquiry, 
of  which  Mr.  Collier  was  Secretary.  There  was  the  question  of 
Catalogue.  There  were  the  'Letters  to  Lord  Ellesmere.'  It  has 
been  no  secret  in  literary  society  for  the  past  dozen  years,  that  a 
most  violent  feeling  of  hostility  to  Mr.  Collier  existed  in  Great 
Russell  Street.  The  Reader  may  not  care  to  judge  between  the 
factions.  Knough  for  him  that  there  are  factions.  The  disputes 
were  chiefly  personal.  JMio  could  make  the  best  Catalogue  ?  Who 
covild  get  together  the  best  books  ?  Who  could  keep  them  in  the 
best  condition  ?  The  officers  in  possession  held  their  ground 
against  ]Mr.  Collier,  and  against  his  powerful  friends  the  late  Duke 
of  Devonshire  and  the  late  Lord  Ellesmere.  It  is  understood  that 
these  noblemen,  and  more  especially  Lord  Ellesmere,  wished  to  put 
Mr.  Collier  at  the  head  of  the  Museum.  To  this  arrangement  every 
man  in  the  institution  was  averse  ;  for  the  rule  of  the  Library  is 
to  rise  by  ranks  ;  and  the  introduction  of  an  outside  man  of  letters 
would  not  only  seem  to  officers  ambitious  of  higher  place  and  better 
pay  a  slight  to  their  service,  but  a  bar  to  their  promotion.  The 
principle  of  putting  a  distinguished    man  of  letters  over  the  heads 


of  officers  trained  to  their  work,  may,  on  literary  and  moral  grounds, 
be  open  to  debate.  The  appointment  ofProf.  Owen  is  a  case  in  point. 
But  to  the  officers  of  the  Library  such  a  principle  is  simply  detestable. 
Fill  the  high  places  of  the  Museum  by  men  distinguished  for  their 
literary  service,  and  the  prospect  of  the  junior  officers  are  at  once 
closed.  In  Mr.  Collier's  case  the  battle  was  sharp.  Yet  the  offi- 
cers of  the  institution  held  thfiir  own  ;  and  from  the  subsccjuent 
growth  and  improvement  in  the  Library,  we  may  safely  conclude 
that  they  held  their  own  because  ihey  were  thoroughly  practical 
and  sufficient  men.  We  have  no  quarrel  with  the  principle  for 
which  they  fight.  We  like  to  sec  men  rise  from  the  ranks.  We 
like  to  reflect  that  every  assistant  in  the  Reading  Koom  carries  the 
staff  of  Principal  in  his  knapsack.  JJut  a  battle  having  taken 
place,  Ihe  Reader  will  perceive  that  officers  who  are  only  mortal, 
may  not  be  sorry  to  show  that  a  gentleman  who  assailed  their  com- 
petency in  years  gone  by,  when  the  world  was  less  with  them  than 
it  is  now,  would  have  been  no  safe  guardian  of  the  national 
treasures. 

Reading  all  that  the  Manuscript  Department  has  to  say  in  the 
light  of  these  old  facts,  the  Reader  will  have  no  difficulty  in  passing 
to  some  very  safe  perceptions  J  lis  first  perception  will  be,  that 
this  book  is  very  dear.  He  pays  Mr.  Rentiey  for  a  volume,  which, 
on  examination,  proves  to  be  nearly  all  extract  from  newspapers, 
journals,  and  printed  books  of  the  commonest  kind.  In  all  our 
wide  experience  of  compilations  we  know  of  no  case  to  compare  with 
this.  There  are  nine  pages  of  Preface,  eleven  about  the  corrected 
Folio,  fourteen  about  odds  and  ends  That  is  all  the  original  writing. 
Each  page  contains  twenty-four  lines,  each  line  about  seven  words. 
The  whole  might  occupy  two  pages  of  the  AtJietKKum.  The  price 
is  six  shillings  ? 

His  next  perception  will  be,  that  the  pledge  to  substantiate  the 
charges  made  against  the  Corrected  Folio  has  been  shirked.  No 
attempt  is  made  to  redeem  the  plighted  word  The  charges  are 
repeated  ;  they  are  not  proved.  Italics  are  not  arguments.  Twenty 
assertions  do  not  make  one  fact.  It  is  not  in  a  court  of  law,  or  in 
a  court  of  criticism,  that  two  witnesses  who  do  not  know  can  be 
allowed  to  weigh  for  one  who  does.  The  glib  way  in  which  our 
Manuscript  Department  passes  by  the  Corrected  Folio,  is  perfectly 
astounding.  Look  at  the  course  throughout.  The  Manuscript 
Department  announces  in  the  newspapers  a  great  discovery.  The 
Old  Corrector  has  been  found  a  base  impostor.  Mr.  Collier  is  a 
forger,  or  the  dupe  of  a  forger.  The  evidence  for  these  assertions  is 
said  to  be  overwhelming.  A  pledge  is  given  that  this  evidence 
shall  be  produced    at  once.     Meanwhile  the  Folio  is  in  the  Manu- 


10 

script  Department,  and  will  be  freely  shown.  A  week  passes,  no 
pamphlet.  A^month,  no  pamphlet.  Six  months,  no  pamphlet.  The 
world  waits.  The  pamphlet  gets  written  and  printed  ;  fac-similes 
get  drawn  and  distributed.  It  is  in  the  press.  But  a  hitch  occurs. 
Mysterious  whispers  go  about.  There  is  a  tallv  of  lawyers  consulted, 
of  further  investigation,  of  presumed  facts  melting  away.  Apolo- 
getic paragraphs  creep  into  newspapers.  The  public  are  asked  to  be- 
lieve that  the  facts  are  proved  ?  A  cry  of  sympathy  and  indignation 
swells  from  society  against  men  who  dare  to  make  a  frightful  accu- 
sation against  a  living  writer  without  being  ready  to  produce  what 
they  at  least  may  chose  to  consider  their  proofs  of  guilt.  Another 
move  is  then  made.  Something  must  be  done.  It  is  not  Mr  Collier, 
it  is  the  Manuscript  Department  which  is  now  on  trial.  Again  we 
hear  that  the  book  is  coming.  But,  lo  !  another  change.  Mr.  Bentley 
is  now  to  be  publisher.  Mr.  Bentley  advertises,  Mr.  Bentley  prints. 
The  thing  is  ready  for  issue.  This  person  has  seen  it,  that  person 
has  read  it.  The  world  will  have  it  to-morrow.  This  afternoon  the 
editor  of  the  Mhenceum  shall  positively  have  a  copy.  Even  at  the 
eleventh  hour  come  more  delays.  Lawyers  are  again  said  to  be 
consulting.  Weeks  pass  by  ;  the  work  is  always  to  appear  on  Mon- 
day. Saint  Monday  comes,  not  the  book.  At  last  there  is  a  sort 
of  clandestine  publication  ;  the  volume  is  out,  and  nobody  knows  of 
it.  No  copy  comes  to  the  Athenaum.  Why  is  Mr.  Bentley's 
usual  course  as  publisher  avoided  ?  We  are  not  aware  that  Mr. 
Bentley,  in  his  long  and  eminent  career  as  a  publisher,  ever  before 
omitted  to  send  us  a  book  of  his  on  the  day  of  issue.  Why  all  this 
mystery  ?  Fancy  a  pamphlet  that  is  to  convince  the  literary  Avorld 
of  an  immense  fraud  having  been  perpetrated,  being  withheld  from 
the  literary  journals  I  Does  all  this  change  of  purpose,  this  delay, 
this  suppression,  bespeak  the  reader's  favourable  attention  as  to  a 
conscientious  writer  dealing  with  a  just  cause  ? 

Now  look  at  the  contents  for  the  proofs  pledged  to  the  world. 
We  are  called  to  a  trial  of  the  Old  Corrector.  This  Old  Corrector 
is  a  modern  literary  swindler.  Mr.  Collier,  who  believes  in  the 
Old  Corrector,  is  a  dupe  or  a  knave.  Hard  words — very  hard 
words,  my  masters ;  but  let  us  hear.  We,  at  least,  are  waiting 
for  the  truth.  We  pass  into  court,  as  the  old  upright  judges  say, 
with  eyes  and  ears  dead  to  the  world.  A  great  cause  is  in  hand  ; 
dismiss  from  your  minds  gentlemen  of  the  jury,  all  that  you  may 
have  read  in  newspapers,  heard  whispered  in  libraries  ;  give  the 
defendant  fair  hearing  and  true  judgment.  Good  But  the  pro- 
secution opens  with  a  volley  of  charges  not  in  the  indictment  I  Will 
it  seem  credible  that  the  prosecutor  assumes  his  case  ?  Will  it  seem 
— we  do  not  say  decent — but  even  possible,  that,  in  a  few — very 
few — words,  he  should  repeat  his  accusation  of  forgery  and  fraud  ; 


11 

then  triumphantly  call  on  Mr.  Collier,  for  his  part,  to  prove  his  inno- 
cence ?  Is  the  iManuscript  Department  in  London  or  in  Cork. 

The  prosecutor  rolls  away  from  the  one  question  before  the  court — 
the  veracity  of  the  Old  Corrector — to  Dulwich,  to  Bridgewater  House, 
to  the  State  Paper  Office.  This  course  of  accusation  is  not  only 
reckless,  but  ridiculous.  It  is  the  .same  thing  as  though  Sydney 
were  accused  of  not  only  writing  the  answer  to  Filmer,  but  of 
forging  Magna  Charta  and  the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon  •  It  is 
the  same  thing  as  if  Montalembert  had  been  charged,  not  only  with 
publishing  the  Debate  on  India,  but  with  robbing  a  church,  or  with 
false  dealing  in  the  funds.  AVe  see  no  ground  on  which  those  new 
insinuation.^  can  be  justified.  By  and  by  we  .shall  show  that  they  are 
false — absolutely  and  beyond  conception  false.  But  were  they 
doubtful,  it  would  be  sin  against  Engli.sh  dealing  to  bring  them  for- 
ward. We  do  not  suffer  even  a  criminal  to  be  tried  on  one  count, 
judged  on  another.  In  no  conceivable  court  of  justice  would  this 
drivelling  on  from  charge  to  charge  be  suffered.  You  do  not  prove 
a  hind  guilty  of  rick-firing  by  asserting  that  he  has  also  possibly 
robbed  a  barn.  Prove  one  count.  You  must  not  dream  that  you 
strengthen  an  unsupported  accusation  by  hinting  at  your  eagerness 
to  bring  forward  a  second  unsupported  accusation.  The  reader 
who  finds  you  rambling  off  from  your  own  distinct  pledge  to  produce 
proofs  of  forgery  and  fraud  in  the  ease  of  the  Old  Corrector,  will 
conclude,  and  rightly  conclude,  that  you  wander  from  your  point 
because  you  have  no  confidence  in  your  case. 

"When  we  drop  down  to  details,  we  are  even  more  dissatisfied 
with  the  way  in  which  our  Manuscript  Department  has  dealt  with 
this  Charge  against  the  Old  Corrector. 

Look  at  these  lithographs.  AVill  any  man  who  ever  scrawls  with 
a  pencil  say  that  Mr.  Netherclift's  copies  of  the  dots  and  words  in 
any  way  suggest  pencil  scratches  ?  How  can  you  reproduce  pencil 
marks  by  ink  ?  Our  Manuscript  Department  has  capped  Mr.  Ru.s- 
kin's  marvellous  feat  of  showing  that  artists  cannot  draw  a  lion  by 
exhibiting  to  the  world  a  picture  of  an  ill-drawn  tiger.  Ink  lines 
are  sharp  in  form,  black  in  tint.  Pencil  lines  are  vague.  Neither 
do  wo  think  Mr.  Netherclift's  copies  faithful  to  the  spirit  of  the 
originals.  We  have  seen  those  originals,  when  the  Folio  was  shown 
at  the  Society  of  Antiquaries,  and  more  recently,  when  it  was  depo- 
sited with  Sir  Frederic  Madden,  and  we  reluctantly,  but  with  no 
fear,  pronounce  these  pretended  fac-similes  worthies  for  the  one 
great  end  for  which  they  have  been  made — that  of  assisting  readers 
unacquainted  with  the  Manuscript  corrections  to  any  true  judg- 
ment of  the  relative  characters  of  the  ink  writing  and  the  pencil 
marks. 


12 

"VVe  now  come  to  the  text.  Here  we  find  three  arguments  pro- 
duced to  damn  Mr.  Collier  and  his  Old  Corrector.  These  three 
arguments  we  will  state  in  words  to  which  even  our  Manuscript 
Department  shall  not  be  able  to  object.  They  stand  in  order  of  im- 
portance thus  : — 1.  That  under  the  ink  writing  of  the  Folio  there 
exists  pencil  writing  in  a  more  modern  hand.  '2.  That  the  cor- 
rections are  far  more  numerous  than  Mr.  Collier  represents  them 
^  to  be.     3.  That   no  one  ever  saw  the  corrections  in  the  Folio  until 

it  had  been  for  some  years  in  Mr  Collier's  possession,  and  that  it 
is  beyond  belief  that  Mr.  Rodd  should  have  sold  such  a  copy  of 
Shak.vpeare  for  thirty  shillings.  Now  in  each  of  these  three  cases 
the  answer  is  so  precise — so  crushing — that  in  pure  good  will  we 
throw  in  the  additional  argument  (4.)  of  the  text-word,  not  here 
used,  but  on  which  an  infinite  deal  of  nothing  has  been  said 
elsewhere. 

1.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  said  that  under  the  ink  writing  of  the 
Folio  certain  pencil  marks  are  visible,  It  is  said  that  with  the 
naked  eye  sometimes,  with  a  microscope  maay  times,  these  pencil 
rr  marks  may  be  clearly  seen   to   underlie   the  ink  writing.     If  so, 

/  there  is  reason  to  conclude  that  the  ink  writing  is  at  least  as  modern 

as  the  pencil  writing.  Find,  therefore,  a  date  for  the  pencilling 
and  you  may  pretty  safely  fix  a  date  for  the  writing.  The  test  of 
spelling  is  adopted.  The  test  of  hand-writing,  as  every  one  who 
knows  manuscript  is  aware,  is  extremely  deceptive.  But,  spelling 
is  supposed  by  our  Manuscript  Department  to  be  evidence, 
Spelling  of  the  word  "body"  is  taken  as  a  sure  test.  This  word  is 
found  in  the  Folio  written  in  pencil  •'  body" — written  in  ink 
y>  "  bodie."     Now,  Bodie  says  our  Manuscript  Department,  is  an  old 

form,  Body  a  new  form  of  the  word.  Ergo,  the  rascal  who 
wrote  "  bodie"  in  ink  upon  "  body"  in  pencil  mu«t  have  been  a 
very  recent  rascal — "  still  alive"  is  the  charitable  supposition, — 
and  his  adoption  of  the  ancient  spelling  in  his  ink  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  a  fraudulent  mystification.  To  show  how  much  is 
made  of  this  argument,  we  must  quote  the  very  words  of  its  tri- 
umphant discoverer  : — 

"  I  now  come  to  the  most  astounding  results  of  these  in- 
vestigations, in  comparison  with  which  all  other  facts  concerning 
the  corrected  folio  become  insignificant.  On  a  close  examination 
of  the  margins  they  are  found  to  be  covered  with  an  infinite  num- 
.  ber  of  faint  pencil  marks  and  corrections,  in  obedience  to  which  the 

■^  supposed  old  corrector  has  made  his  emendations.       These  pencil 

corrections  have  not  even  the  pretence  of  antiquity  in  character  or 
spelling,  but  are  written  in  a  bold  hand  of  the  present  century.  A 
remarkable  instance  occurs  in  'liichard  III.'  (fol.  1G32,  p.  181,  col. 


13 

2),  where  the  stage  direction,  'with  the  body,'  is  written  in  pencil 
Iq  a  clear  modern  hand,  while  over  this  the  ink  corrector  writes  in 
the  antique  and  smaller  character,  '  with  the  dead  bodic,'  the  word 
'  dead'  being  seemingly  inserted  to  cover  over  the  entire  space 
occupied  by  the  larger  pencil  writing,  and  'bodie'  instead  of  'body' 
to  give  the  requisite  appearance  of  anticjuity." 

Now,  we  feel  some  shame  in  having  the  task  thrust  on  us  of 
delivering  the  obvious  answer  to  a  statement  of  this  singular  sort 
made  by  gentlemen  holding  a  good  position  in  a  public  library.  If 
a  youth  under  examination  for  a  clerkship  in  the  Customs  had  given 
such  a  reason  for  his  want  of  faith  in  the  Old  Corrector,  we  cannot 
doubt  that  he  would  have  been  incontinently  sent  back  to  his 
Primer.  Indeed,  the  ignorance  of  books  which  such  an  argument 
pre-supposes  is  in  our  days  perfectly  astounding. 

If  the  gentlemen  who  advance  this  argument  had  read  for  its 
support  no  more  of  Shakspearian  literature  than  every  man  pre- 
tending to  cultivation  in  our  day  reads  for  his  instruction  and 
delight,  they  would  have  seen  that  in  this  matter  of  spelling  their 
pleadings  pass  to  the  defendant's  side.  They  would  have  known 
that  IJody  is  the  ancient  tnrm  of  this  word,  that  Bodie  is  a  com- 
paratively modern  innovation.  The  youngest  reader  who  has 
turned  over  the  leaves  of  his  old  family  iiible  is  aware  that  up  to 
Elizabeth's  time  and  beyond  it  the  word  is  spelt  Body.  In  Tyn- 
dale  it  is  Body — in  Cranmer  it  is  Body  or  Bodye — in  the  Genevan 
version  it  is  ]3ody — in  the  Eheims  it  is  Body.  It  is  the  same  in 
secular  writings.  It  is  Body  in  Caxton's  '  (Touernaylc  of  Ilelthe' 
— Body  in  Chaucer's  '  Canterbury  Tales' — Body  in  Gower's  '  Con- 
fessio  Amantis' — Body  in  Spencer's  'Fairy  Queen  '  In  the  first 
edition  of  Bacon's  'Advancement  of  Learning'  (1005)  it  is  spelt 
Body — in  the  first  edition  of  Kaleigh's  'History  of  the  World'  ( I  G14) 
it  is  spelt  Body — in  the  1('>1()  edition  of  Ben  Johnson's  'Every  Man 
in  his  Humour'  it  is  spelt  Body.  In  the  'Hamlet'  of  1G04  the  word 
is  spelt  Body  no  less  than  fifteen  times — once  by  a  printer's  fault, 
Bodie.  About  the  time  of  Shakspeare's  death  the  fashion  began  to 
change.  Yet,  for  twenty  or  thirty  years,  the  mode  of  spelling  was 
considered  indifierenf,.  In  the  Geneva  Bible  of  1611  the  word  is 
Body  in  St.  Matthew,  Body  in  St.  3Iark,  mainly  Body  in  St. 
Luke,  sometimes  ]?odie  in  St  John.  In  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  we  read  Body  in  the  editions  of  1552, 1G04,  1637  and  1662. 
In  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second  Bodie  became  a  usual  form.  A 
corrector,  therefore,  writing  in  the  time  of  Charles  the  First  would  be 
pretty  sure  to  have  written  Body.  A  corrector  in  the  time  of  Charles 
the  Second  would  as  certainly  have  written  Bodie.  These  facts  are 
no  discoveries  of  ours.  They  are  known  to  boys  and  girls.  Why 
are  they  not  known  at  the  British  Museum  ? 


14 

There  is  one  thing  more  astounding  in  this  matter  than  the  gross 
ignorance ;  that  is,  the  offensive  carelessness  or  haste.  The 
gentlemen  v/ho  bring  this  charge  against  Mr.  Collier  have  not  read 
Shakspeare  himself.  Why,  in  the  very  Shakspeare  Folio  vmder  their 
Microscopes  the  word  "Body"  occurs  more  than  200  times. 
How  is  it  spelt  there  ?  Body — mainly,  if  not  uniformly  Body  I — in 
letters  as  plain  as  pike-staves  I  Whatbecomes  of  the  preposterous 
induction  that  the  ink  writing  must  be  modern  because  it  similates 
ancient  spelling  upon  more  modern  pencil  marks  ? 

2.  The  second  argument  adduced  to  sustain  the  charge  of  forgery 
is,  that  Mr.  Collier  has  reproduced  in  his  books  an  incomplete  List 
of  the  Old  Corrector's  emendations.  We  are  not  quizzing.  The 
Manuscript  Department,  fancying  this  a  reason  on  its  side,  takes  a 
vast  deal  of  pains  to  establish  the  circumstance  beyond  dispute. 
No  less  than  twenty-two  pages  of  emendations  are  given  from  the 
Folio  as  example  ;  not  half  ot  which,  we  are  assured,  are  known  to 
Mr.  Collier.  We  accept  the  proof.  We  do  so  without  even  seeing 
the  Folio.  Is  not  the  knowledge  of  logic  on  a  par  with  the 
knowledge  of  books  ?  Why  the  assertion  proves  that  the  gentlemen 
of  the  Museum  have  made  a  much  closer  scrutiny  of  the  Folio  with 
their  microscopes  than  Mr.  Collier  with  his  unsuspecting  eyes. 
They  know  the  ticks  and  dots,  the  scratches  and  erasures,  far 
better  than  he.  That  is  all.  Because  Mr.  Collier  has  overlooked 
a  great  number  of  marks  in  the  Folio,  how  in  the  name  of  sense 
does  it  follow  that  he  must  have  had  a  finger  in  their  fabrication  ? 
Explain  me  that,  Hal  ! 

A  candid  Beader  will  see  that  such  a  circumstance  is  a  very 
strong  plea  in  bar  of  the  judgment  here  pronounced.  Would  not  a 
forger  know  what  he  had  forged  ?  Would  a  commentator,  even 
supposing  him  capable  of  the  moral  guilt  of  forgery,  fabricate  be- 
yond his  need  ?  Would  the  coiner  risk  his  neck  and  forget  to  pass 
his  gold  ?  Nothing  less  than  the  perversity  of  passion  could  blind 
the  compilers  of  this  charge  to  the  fact,  that  in  proving  the 
abundance  of  unappropriated  hints  in  the  Old  Corrector  they  aie 
proving  Mr.  Collier's  perfect  innocence  of  any  acquaintance  with 
the  resources  cf  that  personage. 

3.  The  third  argument  is  very  gross.  It  is  one  that  no  gentleman 
need  refute.  To  make  it  is  an  offence  against  good  manners  ;  for  it 
amounts  in  effect  to  a  threat  that  if  Mr.  Collier  shall  be  unable  to 
prove  that  the  corrections  were  in  the  F'olio  when  he  bought  it,  he 
will  be  held  guilty  of  their  fabrication.  Such  a  doctrine  is  per- 
fectly frightful.  Yet  it  most  fortunately  happens  that  through 
accidental  circumstances  Mr.  Collier  is  able  to  prove,  by  the  evi- 
dence of  a  witness  of  the  very  highest  credit,  that  the  Folio  while 


15 

it  was  yet  in  Mr.  Rodd's  possession  was  seen  to  be  full  of 
emendations.  Tlie  turning  up  of  this  evidence  in  the  very  hour  of 
need  is  almost  romantic.  Mr.  Collier  hears  that  a  gentleman  and 
a  scholar  of  the  highest  attainments  and  distinction  had  seen  and 
described  the  Folio  to  his  friends.  He  naturally  wrote  to  ask  for 
such  particulars  as  the  gentleman  might  remember  after  a  lapse  of 
so  many  years.  To  his  delight  he  received  from  the  llev.  Dr. 
Wellesley,  the  respected  principal  of  New  Inn  Ilall,  Oxford,  the 
following  most  important  and  decisive  testimony  : 

"  Woodmancote  Rectory,  Ilurstperpoint, 
"  August  13th,  1859. 

"  Sir, — Although  I  do  not  recollect  the  precise  date,  I  remember 
some  years  ago  being  in  the  shop  of  Thomas  Kodd  on  one  occasion 
when  a  case  of  books  from  the  country  had  just  been  opened.  One 
of  these  books  was  an  imperfect  folio  Shakspeare,  ivith  a?t  abun- 
dance of  manuscript  notes  in  the  margins.  lie  observed  to  me 
that  it  was  of  little  value  to  Collectors  as  a  copy,  aiid  that  the 
jnice  was  thirty  shillings.  I  should  have  taken  it  myself ;  but,  as  he 
stated  that  he  had  put  it  by  for  another  customer,  I  did  not  continue 
to  examine  it,  nor  did  I  think  more  about  it,  until  I  heard  afterwards 
that  it  had  been  found  to  possess  great  literary  curi'isity  and  value. 
In  all  probability,  Mr.  Rodd  named  you  to  me,  but  whether  he  or 
others  did  so  the  affair  was  generally  spoken  of  at  the  time,  and  I 
never  heard  it  doubted  that  you  had  become  the  possessor  of  the 
book      I  am,  Sir,  your  faithful  and  obedient  servant. 

"II.  Wellesley." 

"To  J.  P.  CoUier,  Esq." 

This  evidence,  from  the  hand  of  the  Principal  of  New  Inn  Hall, 
disperses  and  destroys  for  ever  the  gross  insinuations  against  Mr 
Collier's  personal   honour. 

4.  There  remains,  as  respects  the  Old  Corrector,  the  mystery  of 
who  he  was  and  when  he  lived.  Those  who  think  he  is  still  alive 
bring  forward  what  they  call  a  Test  AVord.  This  test  Avord  will  be 
found  as  weak  as  the  the  test  spelling.  The  argument  proceeds 
upon  the  assumption  that  the  word  "cheer,"  introduced  by  the  Old 
Corrector  into  the  text  of '  Coriolanus,'  is,  in  the  sense  there  given 
to  it,  a  word  of  modern  growth — not  older,  says  Mr.  Ingleby,  than 
1808.  To  this  assertion  the  reply  is  brief  The  word  was  cer- 
tainly in  use  in  the  time  of  Charles  the  Second  in  the  sense  given 
to  it  by  the  Old  Corrector.  Examples  from  one  book  will  serve  as 
well  as  from  twenty.  In  '  The  .  iary  of  Henry  Teonge,  Chaplain 
on  board  His  Majesty's  Ships  Assistance,  Bristol  and  Royal  Oak, 
anno    1675,    to   1679,'  we  read   at   page    14,  this  passage  : — "  As 


16 

soone  as  the  boate  was  put  off  from  the  ship,  wee  honour  their  de- 
parture with  3  ciiEARES,  7  gunns  and  our  trumpets  sounding." 
The  word  oc3urrs  seven  other  times  in  Teonge,  and  in  precisely 
the  sense  in  which  it  is  used  in  '  Coriolanus.'  So  passes  into  air 
the  List  vestige  of  proof  yet  adduced  against  the  antiquity  and 
genuineness  of  the  Old  Corrector. 

Pass  we  now  from  the  wreck  of  all  these  arguments  to  a  short  con- 
sideration of  the  insinuations  of  minor  crimes  against  Mr.  Collier, 
Havingfailed  most  signally  to  prove,  on  their  own  selected  ground, 
that  the  party  on  trial  had  been  a  rogue  on  one  occasion,  it  would 
seem  to  have  occurred  to  the  gentlemen  of  the  Manuscript  Depart- 
ment that  the  abominable  charge  might  be  made  to  pass  under  a 
general  imputation  that  he  had  always  been  a  rogue.  Three  other 
charges  are  thereupon  insinuated  against  Mr.  Collier. 

Let  us  look  at  these  insinuations  one  by  one.  First,  there  is  the 
case  of  the  Bridgewater  House  documents.  All  the  world  knows 
that  the  late  Earl  of  Ellesmere  allowed  Mr.  Collier  to  inspect  the 
papers  of  his  family  ;  that  Mr.  Collier  published  a  volume  of  selec- 
tions from  these  for  the  Camden  Society.  Among  the  family 
papers  were  several  documents  of  extremely  great  interest  for  the 
history  of  Shakspearc,  and  his  times.  Mr.  Collier,  who  believed 
them  to  be  ancient  and  genuine,  published  them.  Some  persons 
doubted,  and  still  doubt,  whether  these  documents  are  genuine. 
AVe  ourselves  have  doubts  ;  thaugh  we  are  far  from  agreeing  with 
Manuscript  Department  that  they  are  "  modern  forgeries."  We 
are  now  told  by  the  gentlemen,  who  pronounce  on  the  Folio  without 
having  read  it,  that  they  are  in  the  s-ame  handwriting  as  the  Folio 
corrections.  Lord  Ellesmere,  the  present  Earl,  is  of  a  very  different 
mind.  In  a  note  which  Mr.  Collier  cites,  Lord  Ellesmere  says: — 
"There  is  no  pretence  whatever  for  saying  that  the  emendations  in 
the  Perkins  Shakspeare  are  in  the  same  handwriting  as  those  in 
my  first  folio  :  on  the  contrary,  except  as  they  are  (or  profess  to  be) 
of  the  same  period,  they  are  quite  different."  Some  careful  fac- 
similes of  these  Bridgewater  documents  lie  before  us ;  and  we 
confess  that  we  agree  with  the  Earl.  We  see  no  reason  for  pro- 
nouncing the  two  hands  to  be  the  same.  In  fact,  we  should  refuse 
to  do  any  such  thing  There  is  the  faint  resemblance  which  exists 
between  all  Italian  writing  of  the  seventeenth  century ;  certainly 
not  more.  The  difference  between  both  and  Mr.  Collier's  own 
hand  is  organic.  Why — against  the  opinions  of  ]jord  P^llesmere — 
is  this  case  insinuated.^  Mr.  Collier  believes  in  tha  genuineness  of 
these  Bridgewater  papers.  But  su[  posing  he  is  wrong  in  this 
belief — is  credulity  a  crime  ? 

We  are  now  whisked  off  to  Dulwich  ;  where  we  are  told,  that  a 


letter  of  Mrs.  Alleyn's,  in  which  IMr.  Collier  found  the  name  of 
Shakspeare,  no  longer  contains  that  name.  The  letter  is  rotten 
and  torn  ;  it  is  torn  and  worn  in  the  place  where  the  name  of  Shak- 
speare occurred.  The  disa2)pearance  is  natural  enough  ;  and  the 
Manuscript  Department  seems  to  attach  no  very  great  importance 
to  the  loss.  The  idea  of  forgery  in  such  a  case  is  inconceivable. 
The  name  was  found,  but  no  fact  of  any  sort  was  added  to  the  life. 
A  forger  forges  to  some  end.  No  coiner  ever  yet  risked  his  life 
for  the  pleasure  of  making  button  tops. 

We  now  arrive  at  the  last  and  most  extraordinary  charge  in  this 
extraordinary  volume  It  is  here  distinctly  insinuated  that  some 
person  not  named — but  plainly  pointed  to — lias  committed  the 
enormous  offence  of  forging  a  State  Taper.  Here  we  get  on  such 
very  dangerous  ground  that  we  must  quote  the  indictment  in  the 
words  of  those  who  have  drawn  it  up.  We  only  need  premise 
that  the  document  in  question  is  the  well-known  Petition  of  the 
Players  in  159(3.     We  read  : — 

"  It  is  preserved  in  her  Majesty's  State  Paper  Office,  bears  upon 
it  the  official  stamp  (if  that  office,  and  forms  one  of  a  collection  of 
public  papers  (if  undoubted  genuineness.  Yet  there  can  belittle 
question  that  it  belongs  to  the  same  set  of  forgeries  as  those  al- 
ready investigated  :  that  by  some  means,  yet  to  be  traced,  it  has 
been  surreptitiously  introduced  among  the  liecords  where  it  is  now 
found  ;  and  in  the  course  of  official  routine  has  received  with  the 
rest  the  stamp  of  authenticity.  A  fac-simile  of  it  is  given  by  Mr. 
Halliwcll,  in  his  folio  Shakspere,  1853,  (vol.  i.  p.  137),  who  states 
that  it  was  discovered  by  iMr.  Collier  in  the  State  Paper  Office  ; 
and  Mr.  Collier  prints  it  in  his  'Aimals  of  the  Stage'  (1831),  with 
the  following  notice: — '  This  remarkable  Paper  has,  perhaps,  never 
seen  the  light  from  the  moment  it  was  presented,  until  it  was 
very  recently  discovered.  It  is  seven  years  anterior  to  the  date 
of  any  other  authentic  record  which  contains  the  name  of  our 
great  dramatist.'  This  petition  bears  no  date,  and  is  written  on 
half  a  sheet  of  foolscap  paper,  without  water-mark,  and  which,  from 
the  appearance  of  the  edges,  I  should  think  had  probably  once 
formed  the  fly-leaf  of  some  folio  volume.  A  supposed  date  of  159G 
has  been  placed  upon  it  in  pencil  by  one  of  the  gentlemen  in  the 
State  Paper  Office.  Its  execution  is  very  neat,  and  with  any  one 
not  minutely  acquainted  with  the  fictitious  hand  of  these  Shakspeare 
forgeries  it  might  readily  pass  as  genuine.  But  an  examination  of 
the  handwriting  generally,  the  forms  of  some  of  the  letters  in  par- 
ticular, and  the  spurious  appearance  of  the  ink,  led  me  to  the  belief 
not  only  that  the  paper  was  not  authentic,  but  that  it  had  been 
executed  bij  the  saine  hand  as  the  fictitious  documents  already  dis- 
2 


18 

cussed.  This  conviction  I  made  known  to  the  Right  Hon.  the  Mas- 
ter of  the  Kolls,  who  was  good  enough  to  direct  an  official  inquiry 
into  the  authenticity  of  the  document.  In  accordance  with  this 
direction,  on  the  30th  of  January,  Sir  Francis  Palgrave,  Deputy 
Keeper  of  Public  llecords,  T.  DufFus  Hardy,  Esq.,  Assistant 
Keeper  of  Public  Kecords,  and  Professor  Brewer,  Header  at  the 
Rolls,  met  Sir  Frederic  Madden  and  myself  for  the  purpose  of  in- 
vestigation, and  after  a  minute  and  careful  examination  the  following 
unanimous  decision  ivas  arrived  at  as  to  the  fact  of  its  undoubtedly 
spurious  character. — 

'  We,  the  undersigned,  at  the  desire  of  the  Master  of  the  Rolls, 
have  carefully  examined  the  documents  hereunto  annexed,  purport- 
ing to  be  a  petition  to  the  Lords  of  her  Majesty's  Privy  Council, 
from  Thomas  Pope,  Richard  Burbadge,  John  Hemings,  Augustine 
Phillips,  William  Shakespeare,  William  Kempe,  William  Slye, 
Nicholas  Tooley,  and  others,  in  answer  to  a  petition  from  the  In- 
habitants of  the  Liberty  of  the  Blackfriars,  and  we  are  of 
opinion  that  the  document  in  questisn  is  spurious. 

'30th  January,  1860. 

'  Fra  Palgrave,  K.  H., Deputy-Keeper  of  H.M.  Public  Records . 
'Fredkeic   Madden,   K.  H.,  Keeper    of  the    MSS.,   British 

Museum. 
'J.  S.  Brewer,  M  A.,  Reader  at  the  Rolls. 
'  T.  DuFFus  Hardy,  Assistant-Keeper  of  Records. 
'N.  E.  S.  A.  Hamilton,  Assistant  Dep.  of    MSS.,  British 
Museum.' 
'  I  direct  this  paper  to    be   appended  to  the  undated    decument 
now  last  in  the  Bundle,  marked  222,  Eliz,  1596. 

'2  February,  I860. 

'  John  Romilly,  Master  of  the  Rolls.' 

— So  far,  then,  as  relates  to  this  document,  the  question  must  be 
considered  as  set  at  rest ;  and  it  is  almost  unnecessary  to  point  out 
the  weight  of  the  decision,  not  alone  in  regard  to  this  condemned 
forgery,  but  in  respect  of  its  bearing  upon  the  other  writings  here 
treated  of.  Before  a  new  edition  of  Shakspeare  is  issued,  or  a  new 
life  of  Shakspeare  written,  it  will  be  necessary  that  the  whole  of  the 
hitherto  supposed  basis  of  the  Poet's  history  should  be  rigorously 
examined,  and  no  effort  spared  to  discover  the  perpetrator  of  that 
trea.son  against  the  Majesty  of  English  Literature,  which  it  has 
been  my  object  to  denounce." 

This  passage,  every  one  will  say,  has  at  first  a  most  ugly  look. 
Sir  John  Romilly's  name — Mr.  Duffus  Hardy,  Sir  Francis  Pal- 
grave— documents  solemnly  put  before  a  jury  of  scholars — examined 
by  them,  unhesitatingly   condemned   as  spurious  by  them — all  this 


19 

seems  like  dreadful,  earnest  fact.  On  looking  closer  into  the  affair 
the  darkness  begins  to  pale.  Indeed,  the  result  of  inquiry  will  not 
a  little,  we  should  think,  surprise  and  perplex  the  gentlemen  who 
have  throughout  the  attack  on  Mr.  Collier  chosen  to  argue  from 
particulars  to  generals — to  derive  from  the  similarity  of  handwriting 
in  several  documents,  an  argument  in  proof  of  their  fabrication  by 
one  hand. 

On  reading  the  passage,  we  are  at  first  struck  by  the  singular 
fact  that  a  judge,  sitting  in  one  of  our  courts  of  law,  should  in  the 
discharge  of  a  secondary  duty  of  his  high  place,  have  made  himself 
a  party,  even  in  appearance,  or  by  implication,  in  a  personal  attack 
which  may  possibly  lead  to  a  judicial  investigation.  Such  a  course 
is  not  usual  with  our  judges.  Such  a  course  is  peculiarly  opposed 
to  the  spirit  of  Sir  Jolin  Ivomilly's  public  life.  From  what  we  know 
of  Sir  John,  we  feel  convinced  that,  when  permitting  the  scrutiny 
which  has  taken  place  into  the  genuineness  of  this  Player's  Petition, 
he  was  not  sufficiently  aware  of  the  fact  that  his  permission  and  his 
signature  would  be  instantly  used  for  the  purpose  of  publicly  hint- 
ing away  the  good  name  of  an  honourable  man. 

We  are  next  arrested  by  the  singular  circumstance  that  the 
gentlemen  who  pronounce  on  the  spuriousness  of  this  document  are 
not  its  proper  custodians.  Why  is  the  paper  taken  from  the  State 
Paper  Office  to  the  llecord  Office  ?  Why  arc  the  experienced  keep- 
ers of  the  State  Papers  not  made  parties  to  the  certificate  .^  Do  they 
refuse  to  sign  ?  It  is  clear  beyond  cavil  that  they  must  be  the  best 
judges  of  such  things.  Fiom  their  youth  they  have  been  familiar 
with  the  handwriting  of  the  seventeenth  century.  They  know  the 
marks  and  stamps  of  their  office.  They  are,  therefore,  abler  to 
pronounoe  on  the  genuineness  of  a  particular  State  Paper  of  the 
Elizabethan  era,  than  any  outside  person,  however  eminent,  Mr. 
Duffus  Hardy  and  Sir  Francis  Palgravc  are  undoubtedly  most  able 
critics  of  the  Gothic  handwriting  of  the  tenth  and  twelfth  centuries. 
We  are  not  aware  of  their  accomplishments  in  that  respect  for  later 
times.  Mr.  Brewer  is  a  most  able  man,  but  he  is  an  amateur,  so  to 
speak.  Sir  Frederic  Madden  is  out  of  court.  The  want  of  decency 
which  allowed  Mr.  Hamilton  to  set  his  name  to  such  a  certificate  is 
simply  deplorable.  It  is  not  the  custom  in  our  time  for  a  man 
acting  as  public  prosecutor,  to  thrust  himself  first  into  the  jury-box, 
and  then  on  to  the  bench.  The  opinions  of  Mr.  Lechmere  or  of 
Mr.  Lemon  on  the  probable  date  and  genuine  character  of  the  Play- 
er's Petition,  would  have  had  far  more  weight  with  Shakspearian 
scholars  than  the  certificate  signed  by  these  five.  We  are  our- 
selves perfectly  familar  with  that  Petition — and  with  thousands  of 
similar  documents  of  its  assumed  date — yet  we  confess  ourselves 


20 

utterly  unable  to  perceive  the  grounds  from  which  its  spuriousncss 
has  been  inferred  by  the  five  gentlemen  whose  names  we  have  given. 
So  far  as  we  know,  this  opinion  of  ours  is  shared  by  every 
capable  and  independent  Shakspearian  scholar.  Mr.  Dyce  believes 
the  petition  genuine.  Mr,  Charles  Knight  believes  it  genuine. 
Mr.  Halliwell  believes  it  genuine  Mr.  Singer  and  Mr.  Lloyd  believe 
it  genuine.  We  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  of  the  expe- 
rienced officers  of  the  State  I'aper  Office  consider  it  other  ihan 
gonuino. 

This  point,  however,  may  be  safely  reserved  for  future  con- 
troversy. It  will  come  up  again  ;  for  the  Player's  Petition  is  one 
of  the  very  few  Shaksperian  documents  which  remain  to  us.  Its 
light  will  not  be  readily  given  up.  What  we  have  now  to  deal  with 
is  the  more  personal  question — the  big  black  imputation  on  the 
honesty  of  a  particular  scholar.  Mr.  Collier  is  said  to  have  dis- 
covered this  Petilion ;  it  is  hinted,  as  the  Eeader  will  have  seen,  in 
no  vague  terms,  that  he  may  have  fabricated  it  for  purposes  of 
literary  fraud.  Now,  will  it  be  thought  credible,  that  the  gentlemen 
of  a  public  institution — gentlemen  accustomed  to  the  charge  of 
manuscripts — gentlemen  engaged  in  hunting  a  particular  document, 
branded  by  themselves  as  spurious,  to  Mr.  Collier's  door,  should 
never  once  have  thought  of  making  the  preliminary  in(iuiry — whe- 
ther that  Player's  Petition  was,  or  was  not,  known  to  be  in  Her 
Majesty's  State  Paper  Office  before  Mr.  Collier's  researches  first 
began  ?  Such  a  question  would  seem  to  lie  at  jhe  threshold  of  their 
inquiry.  It  is  certain  that,  had  they  made  the  inquiry,  they  would 
have  been  saved  from  an  awfulmistake.  The  easy  and  ready  answer 
to  that  question  sweeps  the  ground  on  which  they  have  chosen  to 
stand  in  their  whole  case  clean  away  from  beneath  their  feet. 
Merely  for  our  reader's  guidance,  we  have  thought  good  to  enter 
into  the  correspondence  which  we  now  produce  : — 
(Copy.) 

"Athenjeum  Office,  Feb.  13,  ISCO. 

"  The  Editor  of  the  Athenceum  presents  his  compliments  to 
Mr.  Lemon,  and,  referring  to  the  Petition  of  the  Players — contained 
in  the  bundle  of  papers  in  the  State  Paper  Office  marked  '  Bundle 
No.  222,  Elizabeth,  1596,'  a  copy  of  which  has  been  printed  in  text 
by  Mr.  Collier  and  in  fac-simile  by  Mr.  Halliwell, — takes  the  liberty 
of  inquiring  whether,  wathin  Mr.  Lemon's  knowledge,  that  Petition 
of  the  Players  was  in  the  State  Paper  Office  before  Mr.  Collier  began 
his  researches  in  that  Office  1     An  early  answer  will  oblige. 

Mr.  Lemon  most  obligingly  answered  this  note  by  return  of  post : — 

"  state  Paper  Oflica,  Feb.  H,  1860. 

"Dear  Sir, — In  reply  to  your  question,  I  beg  to   state  that  the 


21 

Petition  of  the  Players  of  the  Blackfriars  Theatre,  alluded  to  in 
your  note,  wa*;  well  known  to  my  father  and  myself,  before  Mr. 
Payne  Collier  began  his  researches  in  this  Office.  I  am  pretty  con- 
fident that  my  father  himself  brought  it  under  the  notice  of  Mr.  Col- 
lier, in  whose  researches  he  took  great  interest. — I  am  very  faith- 
fully yours,  11.  Lemon. 

"  The  Editor  of  the  .■Vthcnocum." 

Where  now  is  the  Manuscript  Department's  house  of  cards  ? 
What  becomes  of  all  the  inferential  evidence — all  the  dogmatic 
assertion— ^in  favour  of  forgery  established  by  the  fact  of  a  common 
handwriting  ?  Here  is  proof — official,  inconti-overtible  proof — that 
one  of  the  documents  forged,  as  the  Manuscript  Department  has  it, 
by  the  same  hand,  could  notby  any  earthly  possibility  have  been  fa- 
bricated by  3Ir.  Collier.  Ergo,  none  of  tlij  papers  in  the  same  hand 
could  have  been  the  work  of  Mr.  Collier.  Neither  the  Old  Cor- 
rector's Emendations  nor  the  Bridgewater  House  Letters,  can  on 
this  hypolhesis,  be  any  longer  susceptible  of  a  reference  to  him. 
The  assailants  of  the  Old  Corrector  have  unintentionalh'  proved  too 
much.  They  have  chosen  to  stand  on  the  argument  of  accunnila- 
tion.     By  the  argument  of  accumulation  they  now  fall. 


THE  IMPUTED  SILMvSPEARE  FORGERIES. 
Mr.  J.  Fay  lie  Collier  ^  Rcplij. 

itaidenheatJ,  Feb.  14. 

After,  a  delay  of  more  than  seven  months,  Mr.  N.  E.  S.  A. 
Hamilton,  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  Manuscript  Authorities  of  the 
British  Museum,  has  published  his  pamphlet  against  me.  I  began 
to  be  almost  afraid  that  it  would  not  appear  at  all,  or  at  least  dur- 
ing my  life,  while  1  could  vindicate  my  own  conduct  and  charac- 
ter ;  for,  at  the  age  to  which  I  have  arrived,  no  man  can  calculatu 
upon  having  much  time  to  spare.  I  am  thankful  for  my  continued 
health,  and  for  the  non-impairment  of  any  of  my  faculties,  if  only 
because  1  am  thus  able  to  meet,  and,  in  mast  important  particu- 
lars to  confute,  the  various  calumnies  with  which  I  have  been 
assailed. 

The  manner  in  which  I  have  pursued,  especially  since  I  com- 
mitted the  great  offence  of  discovering  the  Corrected  Folio  of 
Shakespeare's  Works,  1G32,  only  shows  how  small  a  reputation  in 
an  inferior  departiuimt  of  literature  is  sufficient  to  secure  the  bit- 
terest hostility.     That  hostility  reached  its  climax  when  a  noble 


and  learned  Lord  did  me  the  honor  to  address  to  nie  a  small  lucu- 
bration on  the  legal  acquirements  of  our  great  dramatist.  Lord 
Campbell's  letter  to  me  appeared  in  the  beginning  of  l!S59,  and 
in  May  of  that  year,  Sir  Frederic  Madden  procured  the  loan  of 
the  Perkins  Folio  (so  I  shall  hereafter  call  it  for  the  sake  of  bre- 
vity) from  His  Grace  the  present  Duke  of  Devonshire. 

Having  obtained  it,  Mr.  N.  E  S.  A.  Hamilton,  one  of  Sir  F. 
Madden's  junior  assistants,  "  seized  the  opportunity"  (his  own 
words)  of  subjecting  the  volume  to  the  strictest  examination.  In 
this  undertaking  he  was  avowedly  aided  by  Sir  F.  Madden  and 
by  Mr.  Maskelyne,  of  the  Mineral  Department,  who  brought  for 
their  use  a  microscope  bearing  the  imposing  and  scientific  name 
of  the  Simonides  Uranius.  They  must  give  nie  leave  to  say  that 
they  applied  to  the  book  even  a  more  powerful  moral  magnifier, 
which  too  many  literary  antagonists  have  at  their  command. 

The  result  of  this  and  other  scrutinies  (from  which  it  should 
seem  I  was  purposely  excluded)  has  been  the  tract  now  before  me, 
which,  by  reprints  and  by  various  other  expedients,*  has  been 
swelled  to  the  bulk  of  155  pages,  and  which  I  take  the  present 
mode  of  answering,  in  some  haste,  in  order  to  counteract  pre-judg- 
ment by  those  who  are  not  acquainted  with  many  of  the  real  facts 
of  the  cnse.  Excepting,  however,  in  its  unimportant  Appendixes, 
Mr.  Hamilton's  '  Inquiry'  contains  little  beyond  what  he  inserted 
in  his  letters  printed  in  the  Times  as  long  since  as  July  last. 

Those  Letters  could  not  fail  to  attract  much  public  attention, 
and  as  it  was  urged,  among  other  things,  that  my  account  of  the 
purchase  of  the  Perkins  Folio  was  "highly  unsatisfactory,'  it  seems 
to  have  met  the  eye  of  the  Principal  of  New  Inn  Hall,  Oxford, 
who,  by  his  own  testimony,  was  fortunately  able,  in  all  essentia 
particulars,  to  confirm  my  statement.  T  bought  the  book  of  Rodd, 
the  bookseller,  in  1849,  for  30^  ,  not  being  then  aware,  nor  till 
long  afterwards,  that  it  contained  a  single  MS.  note.  The  implied, 
almost  the  expressed,  imputation  was,  that  in  1849  it  was  actually 
without  notes,  but  that  I,  being  skilled  in  the  imitation  of  old  writ- 
ing, had  subsequently  inserted  them,  and  had  passed  them  ofl'  as 
ancient  emendations  of  the  text  of  Shakespeare.  It  so  happened, 
that  just  after  I  had  left  Rodd's,  and  had  secured  my  pur- 
chase by  paying  for  it,  leaving  the  volume  to  be  sent  home,  the 
Rev.  Dr.  H.  Wellesley  entered   the  shop,  looked  at  the  book,  and 

*  One  of  these  expedients  has  been  the  occupation  of  no  fewer  than  twenty-two  pages 
with  the  Ohl  Corrector's  emendations  of  '  Hamlet,'  all  that  were  really  important  having 
been  pointed  (jut  fi;jht  years  ago.  What  bearing  this  useless  rejietition  can  have  upon  the 
quos'.iMii  "I  ,ni!  in  III  icity,  it  would  ])uzzle  abler  men  than  Mr.  Hamilton  to  e.xplain.  His 
real  ol  ,'  '"  luovr  my  miiissions  ;  but  I  purposely  excluded  many  merely  literal 

errors  ,1.1'  im  .  w  liicli  Mr.  Iliiniilton  thinks  worthy  of  record.  This  is  a  testimony  in 
favour  ul  i;.i.  uld  C  uiector  which  1  little  expected. 


23 

seeing  the  MS.  notes,  which  I  had  not  seen,  wished  to  become  the 
possessor,  llodd  informed  Dr.  AVellesley  that  the  old  folio  had 
been  already  sold  for  the  very  price  T  had  given  for  it  ;  and  it  was 
mentioned  to  me  in  August  last,  that  Dr.  Wellesley  had  openly 
stated  this  circumstance,  I  therefore  took  the  liberty,  though  a 
perfect  stranger,  of  writing  to  Dr.  Wellesley  for  such  particulars 
as  he  could  recollect  after  the  lapse  of  about  ten  years.  He  kindly 
lost  no  time  in  replying  to  my  note,  dating  from  his  rectory  at 
Woodmancote,  Sussex;  and  if  my  account  of  the  mode  in  which  I 
obtained  the  Perkins  Folio,  have  been  "  highly  unsatisfactory"  to 
ray  enemies,  it  may  be  reasonably  doubted  whether  Dr.  Welles- 
ley's  substantial  confirmation  of  that  account  will  be  more  accept- 
able.    It  is  as  follows  : — 

"  Woodmancote  Rectory,  Hurstperpoint, 
"August  13th,  1859. 

"  Sir, — Although  T  do  not  recollect  the  precise  date,  I  remem- 
ber some  years  ago  being  in  the  shop  of  Thomas  Kodd  on  one  oc- 
casion when  a  case  of  books  from  the  country  had  just  been  open- 
ed. One  of  those  books  was  an  imperfect  folio  Shahcspcare,  loitJb  an 
abundance  of  manuscript  notes  in  the  margins.  He  observed  to 
me  that  it  was  of  little  value  to  Collectors  as  a  copy,  and  that 
the  price  WO.S  thii'ty  shillings.  I  should  have  taken  it  myself; 
but,  as  he  stated  that  he  had  put  it  by  for  another  customer,  I  did 
not  continue  to  examine  it,  nor  did  I  think  any  more  about  it,  until  I 
heard  afterwards  that  it  had  been  found  to  \wssess  great  lit erar?/  cti- 
riosity  a?id  value.  In  all  probability,  Mr.  Eodd  named  you  to  me, 
but  whether  he  or  others  did  so,  the  affair  was  generally  spoken  of 
at  the  time,  and  I  never  heard  it  doubted  that  you  had  become  the 
possessor  of  the  book.  I  am,  Sir,  your  faithful  and  obedient 
servant,  H.  Wkllesley." 

"To  J.  P.  Collier,  Esq." 

I  apprehend  that  the  above  note  will  at  once  put  an  end  to  the 
discreditable  insinuations  (if  they  amount  to  no  more)  that  I  am 
the  real  author  of  the  MS.  notes  in  the  Perkins  Folio.  They  were 
all  in  the  margins  of  the  volume  when  it  came  into  my  hands  in 
1849,  although,  from  causes  I  explained,  I  was  not  aware  of  their 
existence  till  some  time  afterwards.  When  I  wrote  the  Preface  to 
the  second  edition  of  my  '  Notes  and  Emendations,'  octavo,  1853,  I 
felt  satisfied  that  I  should  be  able  to  carry  back  the  history  of  the 
book  nearly  half  a  century  earlier  by  the  evidence  of  a  gentleman 
of  the  name  of  Parry,  who,  on  seeing  the  fac-simile  which  had 
fronted  the  title-page  of  the  first  edition  of  1852,  had  instantly  de- 
clared that  he  recognized  the  handwriting  of  the  MS.  notes,  and 
that  the  very  book  containing  them  had  been  in  his  possession  very 


24 

many  years  before.  It  is  needless  here  to  repeat  the  particular 
contents  of  my  Preface,  which  I  showed  to  Mr.  Parry  before  it  was 
printed  off,  and  which  he  entirely  approved.  Owing  to  the  late 
date  at  which  I  had  heard  of  his  recognition  of  the  volume  by  its 
notes,  and  to  a  slight  accident  which  had  befallen  him,  I  was  not 
able  to  exhibit  to  him  the  Folio  itself  until  after  the  Preface  had 
been  worked  oiF;  but  I  distinctly  state,  in  the  most  positive  man- 
ner, that  very  soon  after  it  w^as  so  worked  off  I  took  the  Perkins 
Folio  with  me  to  St.  John's  Wood,  where  Mr.  Parry  resided,  and 
showed  it  to  him,  both  inside  and  outside.  I  met  him  coming  from 
the  house,  and,  owing  to  his  temporary  lameness,  he  was  walking 
with  a  stick  (not  with  sticks,  as  Mr.  Parry  states,  and  least  of  all 
with  crutches,  as  Mr.  Hamilton  wishes  to  make  out),  which  stick  I 
held  for  him,  while  he  looked  at  the  volume  I  had  brought :  he 
turned  over  the  leaves  in  several  places,  and  I  am  very  sure  looked 
also  at  the  cover,  and  returned  the  Folio  to  me,  while  I  handed 
him  back  his  stick.  Upon  these  points  I  cannot  be  mistaken, 
though  Mr.  Parry  seems  to  have  forgotten  them  (he  is  a  man  of 
about  my  own  age,  and  I  heartily  wish  that  his  memory  wei'e  as  good 
as  mine),  and  within  a  very  few  days  after  I  had  seem  him  I  made 
the  following  memorandum,  which  I  now  extract  from  the  margin 
of  my  own  copy  of  '  Notes  and  Emendations,'  8vo.  1853  : — 

"  I  afterwards  showed  him  |Mr.  Parry]  the  book  itself,  and  hav- 
ing looked  at  it  in  several  places,  he  said.  This  ivasmy  ho:jk  :  it  is 
the  same,  hut  it  has  been  much  inisused  since  it  zvas  in  my  pos- 
session ^ 

This  note  was  inserted  about  seven  years  ago,  and  I  cannot  be 
more  sure  of  anything  than  of  the  correctness  of  the  information  it 
contains.  I  impute  no  blame  to  iVIr.  Parry  :  I  have  no  personal 
acquaintance  with  him  beyond  what  I  have  stated,  but  1  believe 
him  to  be  a  man  of  honour  and  probity,  and  he  is  known  to  per- 
sons for  whom  I  have  the  highest  respect  and  esteem.  When  he 
went  to  the  British  Museum  and  saw  Sir  F.  Madden,  Mr.  Hamil- 
ton, Mr.  Maskelyne  and  others,  he  may  have  become  confused,  and 
they  may  have  passed  and  re-passed  the  different  folios  of  Shake- 
speare before  his  eyes  until  he  did  not  remember  which  edition  had 
been  his  own  :  to  me  he  always  said  that  his  annotated  folio  was 
of  the  date  of  1632.  Several  living  members  of  my  family  (to  say 
nothing  of  the  dead)  can  prove  that,  when  I  returned  from  St. 
John's  Wood,  I  said  that  I  had  seen  Mr.  Parry,  and  that  he  had 
recognized  the  Perkins  Folio  as  an  old  friend. 

However,  independently  of  Mr.  Parry's  evidence,  which  would 
have  traced  the  MS.  emendations  to  the  very  commencement  of 
the  present  century,  Dr.  Wellesley's  note   establishes  beyond  dis- 


25 

pute  that  tliey  were    in    the  volume  when  I  jiurcliasod  it  of  Eodd, 
in  1849. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  pencil  marks,  and  here  again 
my  enemies  have  been  so  charitable  as  to  assign  them  to  me.  Mr. 
Hamilton,  in  his  '  Inquiry,'  has  given  a  fac-simile  of  some  that  best 
answered  his  purpose,  and  in  a  manner  that  best  answered  his 
purpose.  I  never  saw  them,  and  they  were  never  seen  by  anybody 
(not  even  by  the  litliographer  who  made  for  me  no  fewer  than 
nineteen  facsimiles  from  every  part  of  the  book)  until  the  Per- 
kins Folio  had  found  its  way  to  the  British  Museum.  There,  and 
there  only,  they  originated,  I  mean  of  course  the  discovery  of 
them  ;  and  Mr.  Hamilton  and  his  friends  have  displayed  wonderful 
ingenuity  in  construing,  what  they  often  admit  to  be  mere  specks 
and  points  of  blunibago,  into  continuous  lines  and  even  into  com- 
plete words.  Tt  is  enough  for  me  to  assert,  most  unequivocally, 
that  T  never  introduced  one  of  them  ;  and  it  is  singular  that  the  late 
Duke  of  Devonshire,  whom  I  have  seen  day  after  day  looking  over 
the  emendations,  and  calling  in  the  assistance  of  my  eyes  and 
and  spectacles,  never  once  observed  that  they  existed. 

]Uit  the  ^Manuscript  Authorities  of  the  British  Museum  have 
proceeded  with  their  eyes  open  ;  they,  indeed,  in  some  respects, 
have  had  eyes  where  other  folks  are  blind,  but  they  have  not  at- 
tended to  the  warning  given  by  those  who  were  not  so  bent  on 
making  out  fraud  or  imposition  that  they  were  only  discovering  a 
mare's  nest.  The  truth  seems  to  be,  that  latterly  they  have  begun 
to  feel  that  they  have  little  chance  of  proving  their  accusation. 
Hence  much  of  the  delay  that  has  occurred  in  the  publication  of 
their  pamphlet,  to  which  such  a  dignified  shape  has  been  given  : 
they  have  been  hunting  in  every  direction,  and  searching  in  every 
hole  and  corner  for  something  to  support  and  bolster  up  their  fall- 
ing accusation.  They  have  gone  back,  not  only  ten,  but  twenty, 
thirty,  and  almost  forty  years,  to  find  scraps  of  information  that 
might  lead  to  the  supposition  that  1  was  not  always  as  scrupulous  as 
could  be  wished  in  my  literary  dealings.  There  is  not  an  atom  of 
foundation  for  any  such  imputation.  I  have  always  been  a  hard- 
working man,  and  I  have  sometimes  been  employed  upon  what,  if 
I  could,  I  would  have  avoided.  For  many  years  I  seldom  went  to 
bed  until  other  people  were  rising,  and  how  much  I  have  worked 
gratuitously  for  friends  and  Societies  I  need  not  say  Do  people 
think,  then,  that  I  have  had  time,  not  only  to  acquire  one  form  of 
old  writing,  but  many,  to  manufacture  inks  and  secretly  to  practise 
all  the  arts  of  imposition  ?  I  never  tried  it  in  my  life,  but  I  am 
confident  it  is  no  such  easy  thing  to  imitate  even  one  kind  of  old 
writing,  much  less  to  imitate  many.     I  have  had  too  much  to  do 


26 

with  my  own  plain  round  English  hand  (from  which  I  never,  even 
for  a  playful  purpose,  attempted  to  vary)  to  be  able  to  devote  my 
time  to  the  manufacture  of  public  or  private  documents,  and,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  Perkins  Folio,  to  fill  a  volume  of  about  a  thousand 
pages,  with  innumerable  notes,  to  say  nothing  of  changes  of  punc- 
tuation in  tens  of  thousands  of  places. 

Neither  have  I  ever  enjoyed  facilities  absolutely  necessary  to 
such  elaborate  trickery.  In  iive  out  of  the  eight  houses  I  have 
occupied,  since  I  married  forty-five  years  ago,  I  never  had  a  study 
to  myself:  my  wife,  children  and  servants  were  too  numerous  to 
allow  of  it.  The  common  eating-room  was  therefore  my  common 
writing-room ;  and  when  I  have  had  a  study,  I  defy  the  world  to 
show  an  instance  in  which  I  ever  turned  the  key  of  the  door  to 
prevent  intrusion  :  everybody  was  admitted  at  all  hours.  I  had 
no  secrets  :  my  wife  opened  and  read  every  letter  I  received  ;  and 
in  my  study  was  always  kept  a  chest  of  drawers  to  which  the  fam- 
ily had  constant  access  for  some  of  the  most  ordinary  requirements 
of  a  household.  Therefore,  upon  nobody  could  this  charge  of  for- 
gery against  me  have  come  with  more  astonishment  than  upon  my 
children  ;  and  if  my  wife  had  lived,  I  think  it  would  have  killed 
her  to  have  known  that  such  a  base  accusation  was  kept  hanging 
over  her  husband's  head  for  about  eight  months,  when  she  was  well 
aware  that  it  could  be  refuted  in  an  hour. 

Upon  this  point  1  will  trust  myself  to  say  no  more  ;  but  T  will 
just  notice  briefly  the  supplemental  and  subsidiary  charges  made 
against  me,  in  order  to  give  some  slight  plausibility  to  the  accusa- 
tion that  I  am  myself  the  author  of  the  pen  and  pencil  emenda- 
tions in  the  Perkins  Folio. 

First  and  foremost  come  what  Mr.  Hamilton  without  scruple  ven- 
tures to  call  "  the  Bridgewater  Shakespeare  Forgeries.":]:  Surely 
this  is  begging  the  whole  question  :  they  may  be  forgeries,  but  I 
do  not  believe  that  they  are  so.  I  never  made  them  ;  but  I  found 
them  in  1835  among  Lord  Ellesmere's  manuscripts.  I  was,  it  is 
true,  alone  when  they  came  to  my  hands  ;  but  his  Lordship  had 
been  in  the  room  only  a  few  minutes  before;  and  the  moment  I 
had  ascertained  what  they  were,  I  carried  them  to  him  in  the  Up- 
per Library,  and  at  his  instance  read  them  to  him.  His  Lordship 
desired  me  to  copy   them  ;  I  did  so,  and  carried   the  originals  and 

i  I  discovered  twenty  years  ago  some  MS.  emendations  in  a  copy  of  Shakespeare,  folio, 
1623,  in  liis  Lordship's  library,  and  these  are  now  brought  against  me,  and  charged  as  in 
the  same  handwriting  as  the  notes  in  the  Perltins  Folio.  I  deny  it  on  my  own  authority, 
and  on  the  authority  of  the  present  Earl  of  Ellesmere,  who  recently  wrote  a  note  to  a  gentle- 
man of  my  acquaintance  containing  these  words: — "There  is  no  pretence  whatever  for 
saying  that  the  emendations  in  the  Perkins  Shakespeare  arc  in  the  same  handwriting  as 
those  in  my  first  folio  :  on  the  contrary,  except  as  they  are  (or  profess  to  be)  of  the  same 
period,  they  are  quite  different."  His  Lordship  kindly  added,  that  I  might  make  use,  if  I 
pleased,  of  "the  result  of  his  observations. 


the  copies  to  him.  I  left  them  with  him  ;  and  on  the  next  day,  or 
on  the  day  after,  I  overtook  him  going  into  Bridgewater  House  : 
he  told  me  that  he  had  just  seen  Mr.  Murray,  who  had  said  that,  if 
I  would  put  the  documents  into  shape,  and  write  an  Introduction 
to  them,  he  would  give  me  50/.  or  lOU/.  (I  think  the  former  was  the 
sum)  for  my  pains.  I  declined  the  ofler  at  onee,  saying  that  I  could 
not  consent  to  mak-^  money  by  what  was  his  Lordship's  property. 
Lord  Ellesmere,  with  his  usual  generosity,  replied  that  the  docu- 
ments were  as  much  my  property  as  his,  for  I  had  found  them,  and, 
but  for  me,  they  might  not  have  been  discovered  till  Doomsday. 
Still  I  declined,  but  said  that  I  should  be  happy  to  print  them  for 
myself,  and  as  presents  to  my  friends,  if  I  were  permitted.  "  Do 
as  you  like  with  them,"  said  his  Lordship ;  and,  in  a  manner, 
forced  them  into  my  hands,  adding,  "  consider  them  and  treat  them 
as  your  own." 

I  hastened  with  them  to  Kodd's  and  he  and  I  examined  them 
carefully :  it  was  at  first  agreed  that  they  should  be  printed,  and 
that  Rodd  should  sell  as  many  as  would  pay  the  cost ;  but  I  after- 
wards altered  my  views,  and  only  a  very  few  copies  got  out  in  the 
usual  manner. 

Here  I  may  be  allowed  to  state,  as  it  is  in  .some  sort  necessary 
for  my  own  vindication,  that,  until  I  prepared  my  first  edition  of 
Shakespeare,  in  1843,  I  never  made  a  single  farthing  by  anything  I 
wrote  regarding  our  great  dramatist  Everything  was  printed  at 
my  own  expen.se,  for  presents,  or  at  the  expense  of  Societies,  to 
which  T  belonged,  for  the  use  of  the  members.  Thus  I  was  entirely 
out  of  pocket  for  my  three  tracts — '  New  Facts,'  '  New  Particu- 
lars,' and  '  Farther  l^articulars,' — and,  in  the  whole,  I  spent  more 
than  100/.  in  the  illustration  of  Shakespeare's  Life  and  Plays.  A 
weekly  critic  has  done  me  only  justice  when,  some  time  ago,  he 
remember  that,  but  for  the  firm  resistance  of  the  Council,  I  should 
have  presented  the  first  edition  of  my  '  Notes  and  Emendations'  to 
the  Shakespeare  Society  The  late  Earl  of  Ellesmere  and  the  late 
Duke  of  Devonshire  both  knew  that  I  was  not  of  a  mercenary  or 
fraudulent  turn  ;  I  laid  out  large  sums  for  each  of  them  ;  and  they 
never  expected  from  me  receipt  or  memorandum." 

My  '  New  Facts'  consisted  mainly  of  what  Mr.  Hamilton  desig- 
nates as  "  the  Bridgewater  House  Shakespeare  Forgeries,"  He 
adduces  little  or  no  evidence  to  prove  them  so ;  he  is  satisfied  with 
his  own  gratis  dictum  ;  but  I  doubt  whether  other  people  will  be 
quite  as  easily  contented.  I  had  the  documents  in  my  possession 
for  many  years  unasked  for  ;  but  one  day  Lord  Ellesmere  either 
wrote  to  me,  or  told  me,  that  he  had  heard  their  authenticity  ques- 
tioned, and  ho   spoke   of  Mr.  J.  Wilson  Croker  as  an  unbeliever. 


28 

His  Lordship,  therefore,  requested  me  to  send  them  to  his  house  ; 
I  did  so,  and  expressed  my  satisfaction  that  he  had  resumed  the 
possession  of  his  own  papers  When  I  saw  his  Lordship  next,  a 
few  weeks  had  elapsed,  and  he  informed  me  that  in  the  interval  the 
documents  had  been  "  tested ;"  but  he  did  not  say  by  whom,  nor 
in  what  way  ;  merely  adding  that  he  was  quite  satisfied.  Mr.  Cro- 
ker,  at  a  subsequent  period,  told  me  that  he  had  been  convinced  by 
the  inspection,  and  Mr.  liallam,  whom  I  met  one  day  at  dinner 
while  I  was  one  of  the  Vice-Presidents  of  the  Society  of  Antiqua- 
ries, gave  me  the  same  assurance.  A  year  or  two  subsequently 
the  liarl  of  Ellesmere  did  not  think  me  unworthy  of  the  appoint- 
ment of  Secretary  to  the  Commission  on  the  British  Museum. 

I  cannot  state  exactly  at  what  date  it  occurred ;  but  another 
paper  subsequently  turned  up  at  Bridgewater  House,  which  Lord 
Ellesmere  insisted  that  I  should  retain,  as  a  sort  of  justification  of 
my  own  opinions.  It  was  partly  in  the  Italian  handwriting  of  some 
scribe  of  the  day,  and  partly  in  that  of  Sir  George  Buck,  Master 
of  the  Bevels  to  James  the  I'irst,  and  signed  with  his  name  ;  stat- 
ing that  the  Players  of  the  Blackfriars  required  too  much  by  1,500/. 
for  their  property  in  the  Theatre  there,  which  the  Crown  or  the 
City  of  London  wished  to  purchase  in  order  to  abate  the  real  or 
supposed  nuisance. 

Of  all  these  documents  v.'liat  has  usualh'  been  called  "  the  H  S. 
Letter"  has  attracted  most  attention.  H.  S.  has  generally  been 
taken  as  the  initials  of  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  and  most  probably 
they  were  so.  I  need  not  describe  a  paper  which  has  since  been 
printed  in  every  Life  of  Shakespeare  ;  and  I  only  particularize  it 
that  I  may  mention  that  a  fae-similc  of  it  was  made  not  very  long 
after  the  formation  of  the  Shakespeare  Sociery,  by  Mr.  Netherclift, 
sen.,  the  most  able  as  well  as  the  most  experienced  artist  in  that 
department  that  I  ever  knew.  He  assured  me  at  the  time  that,  in 
his  judgment,  the  original  was  a  genuine  document,  and  within  the 
last  few  weeks,  at  my  instance,  he  has,  upon  again  inspecting  all 
the  documents,  renewed  this  expression  of  his  conviction.  Subse- 
quently, that  is  to  say,  about  the  year  1848  or  1849,  the  other 
"  Bridgewater  Shakespeare  Forgeries,"  as  Mr.  Hamilton  pleases  to 
term  them,  also  went  through  the  hands  of  Mr.  Netherclift,  for  the 
same  purpose  ;  and,  in  order  that  nothing  might  be  omitted,  he 
added,  at  my  instance,  a  separate  sheet  of  the  water-marks  of  the 
paper  on  which  each  had  been  written. 

Surely,  if  I  had  been  conscious  that  all  were  forgeries,  it  is  not 
likely  that  I  should  have  placed  them,  without  the  slightest 
scruple  or  control,  in  such  skilful  and  knowing  hands. 

Another  point  may  also  here  properly  be  noticed.     I  sent  copies 


29 

of  all  fac-similes  to  the  Eev.  A  Dyce,  and  to  Mr.  llalliwell,  but 
only  of  "  the  II.  ;?.  Letter"  in  the  first  instance.  The  liev.  A.  Deyc 
in  leturn  sent  me  a  note  containing  these  words: — "The  fac- 
simile has  certainly  removed  from  mij  mind  all  doubis  alK)%(t  the 
genuiness  of  the  Letter^  He,  therefore,  did  not  consider  it  a 
"  Bridgewater  House  Shakespeare  Forgery." 

Mr.  Halliwell,  too,  in  hi.^  '  Life  of  Shakespeare,'  8vo.  1848,  hav- 
ing introduced  a  fac-simile  <if  j.art  of  "  the  H.  S.  Letter,"  asserts 
that  an  inspection  of  it  "  will  suffice  to  convince  anyone  acquainted 
with  such  matters  that  it  is  a  genuine  manuscript  of  the  period :'' 
he  adds  a  reason  why,  in  his  opinion,  it  was  almost  impossible  that 
it  should  be  a  forgery  ;  and,  in  a  note,  he  subjoins  that  No.  201 
Art.  3,  in  the  Library  of  the  Society  of  Antiijuaries,  is  a  copy  of  a 
commission  of  about  the  same  period,  not  only  marked,  like  "  the 
H.  S  Letter,"  with  the  Avurds  copia  vera,  at  the  conclusion,  but 
the  whole  absolutely  written  by  the  same  hand  Yet  this  is  one  of 
the  documents  now  "  denounced"  as  spurious. 

I  must  say  a  few  words,  and  they  shall  be  as  few  as  possible, 
regarding  the  MSS.  at  Dulwieh  College.  Here  I  am  charged  not 
so  much  with  forgery  as  fraud,  though  forgery  is  also  coupled  in 
the  accusation.  A  niuch-decayed  letter  has  been  preserved  in  the 
Library  from  Mrs.  Alleyn  to  her  husband,  dated  Oct.  3,  10U3,  and 
in  one  part  of  it,  according  to  my  reading,  she  ment'ons  having 
seen  "  Mr.  Shakespeare  of  the  Globe."  It  is  admitted  on  all 
hands,  that  the  letter  is  very  rotten,  and  that  portions  of  it  are  de- 
ficient in  this  place  ;  but  the  gist  of  the  imputation  is,  that  Shake- 
speare was  never  spoken  of  in  it,  but  that  I,  taking  advantage  of 
the  defects  in  the  old  paper,  purposely  misrepresented  the  matter. 
It  is  added  that  for  the  accomplishment  of  this  fraud,  I  misread  and 
misrepresented  the  contents  of  the  letter.  Now,  inasmuch  as  the 
old  decayed  paper  is  here  indisputely  defective,  Mr.  Hamilton  could 
not  possibly  know  whether  Shakespeare's  name  had  or  had  not 
been  visible  when  I  saw  the  letter  thirty  years  ago.  I  may  or  may 
not  have  misread  some  utterly  unimportant  words,  nor  does  it  sig- 
nify at  all,  as  regards  his  biography,  whether  Shakespeare  was  or 
was  not  in  Southwark  on  the'ord  ot  October,  1603  ;  but  1  assert 
most  distinctly,  that  the  name  was  contained  in  this  part  of  Mrs. 
Alleyn's  Letter,  and  a  dear  and  dead  friend  of  mine  could  bear 
witness  to  the  fact  were  he  fortunately  now  alive  Not  only  did  we 
er.d;avour  to  make  out  the  perishing  and  perLshed  words  together, 
but  we  actually  put  the  old  epistle  in  a  piece  of  paper  for  better 
security,  and  wrote  upon  the  outside  of  it,  that  what  was  within 
was   especially  worthy   of  preservation.*     If  that   envelope  have 

*  My  confident  belief  is,  that  we  showed  the  letter  and  Shakespeare's  name  to  the  Master 
or  to  the  Librarian  of  the  College  of  that  day. 


30 

since  disappeared  (I  have  not  seen  it  from  that  day  to  this)  it  may 
have  been  thoughtlessly  cast  aside,  or  purposely  removed.  Per- 
haps it  is  still  in  the  box  with  the  other  papers  that  came  under 
my  observation.  Let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  if  my  object  had  been 
to  commit  the  imputed  fraud,  nothing  could  have  been  more  easy 
than  for  me  to  have  rubbed  away  a  little  more  of  the  crumbling 
paper,  and  who  then  could  have  detected  the  trick  ?  Instead  of 
doing  so,  I  did  my  best  to  ensure  that  the  rotten  paper  should  hold 
together  as  long  as  possible. 

Mr.  Hamilton  also  falls  foul  of  other  biographical  materials 
which  I  met  with,  and  which  unquestionably  exist  in  the  same  cha- 
ritable Institution.  One  of  them  is  a  Player's  Challenge,  collated 
by  Mr.  Halliwell,  and  printed  by  him  in  1848,  as  a  genuine  relic  of 
the  same  kind  as  several  others  that  have  come  down  to  our  time. 
Another  is  a  sort  of  assessment  to  the  poor  of  Southwark,  dated 
the  6th  of  April,  1609,  in  which  Shakespeare  appears  as  a  contrib- 
utor ;  and  surely  it  is  enough  for  me  to  say  of  this  document,  that 
it  was  seen  by  Malone  when  I  was  only  seven  years  old,  as  he  has 
himself  recorded  in  his  'Enquiry,'  8vo.  1796,  p.  215.  At  all 
events  I  suppose  that  even  Mr.  Hamilton  will  not  go  quite  the 
length  of  contending  that  I  was  a  forger  at  that  early  age,  when  I 
was  only  a  probationer  in  "  pot-hooks  and  hangers." 

The  last  of  the  assailed  documents  I  shall  have  reason  on  the 
present  occasion,  to  notice  is  one  which  I  did  not  find,  but  ichich 
was  found  for  me,  nearly  thirty-five  years  ago,  by  the  father  of  a 
very  able  and  learned  public  servant,  now  high  in  the  ofl[ice  in 
which  the  discovery  was  made.  I  was  then  collecting  materials 
for  my  '  History  of  English  Dramatic  Poetry  and  the  Stage  ;'  and 
for  this  purpose  I  had  obtained  an  introduction  to  Mr.  Lemon,  then, 
I  apprehend,  the  principal  acting  person  in  the  State  Paper  Ofiice, 
in  George  Street,  Westminster.  He  was  good  enough  to  institute 
searches  for  me  among  the  archives  in  his  charge  ;  and  calling 
there  one  morning  (my  memory  is  perfect  on  the  subject,  notwith- 
standing the  lapse  of  more  than  a  generation),  he  produced  five  or 
six  papers,  all  contributing  to  my  object.  I  lamented  to  him  that 
I  should  not  have  time  to  copy  them  all  before  the  ofiice  closed, 
and  Mr.  Lemon  kindly  undertook  to  get  one  of  them  transcribed 
for  me.  It  was  a  Petition  from  the  Players  at  the  Blackfriars 
Theatre,  in  answer  to  a  remonstrance  from  the  inhabitants  of  the 
precinct,  mainly  against  the  nuisance  of  the  crowds  attracted  by 
the  performances,  and  against  the  repair  of  the  house.  I  myself 
copied  part  of  the  representation  to  Avhich  this  document  was  a 
reply  ;  and  when  Mr.  Lemon  returned. into  the  room  with  the  trans- 
cript of  the  Petition,  he  and  I  compared  the  two :  he  took  away  the 


31 

original — which  I  never  saw  again — and  I  the  copy  of  it,  which  I 
inserted  in  my  '  History,'  sending  to  the  printer  the  very  sheet 
which  Mr.  Lemon  had  given  to  me.  I  should  have  had  it  in  my 
possession  to'this  day  had  I  not,  when  I  removed  into  the  country,  got 
rid  of  all  my  "  waste," — consisting,  among  other  things,  of  every 
proof  and  piece  of  "  copy"  of  the  works  in  which,  up  to  1850,  I  had 
been  concerned. 

Such  is  the  history  of  this  Petition  of  the  Players  at  the  Black- 
friars,  as  far  as  I  am  acquainted  with  it.  I  understood  that  while 
the  public  archives  were  in  a  course  of  removal  from  Great  George 
Street  to  the  new  State  Paper  Office  it  was  mislaid,  and  was  not 
recovered  until  some  ten  or  twelve  years  ago.  If,  therefore,  it  be  a 
forgery,  it  was  executed  before  my  time,  for  until  that  period  I  did 
not  even  know  where  the  State  Paper  Office  was.  Mr.  Hamilton  is 
more  thanhalf  inclined  to  treat  as  an  imposition  another  highly 
curious  document,  printed  for  the  first  time  in  my  last  edition  of 
'  Shakespeare'  (8vo.  1858,  Vol.  HI.  p.  214) ;  but  really  he  ought  to 
inform  himself  better  regarding  our  public  muniments  before  he 
scatters  his  imputations. 

I  humbly  hope  that  all  but  my  enemies  will  be  of  opinion  that  I 
have  cleared  myself  rca.sonably  well  from  all  suspicion  of  guilt,  and 
especially  from  any  discreditable  connexion  with  the  emendations 
in  the  Perkins  Folio.  The  Kev.  Dr.  Wellesley  knows  that  they 
were  in  it  when  I  bought  the  book.  I  could  have  no  motive  for 
assigning  them  to  anybody  else,  if  I  were  really  the  author  of  so 
many  invaluable  changes  ;  they  would  do  the  utmost  credit  to  any 
editor,  and  would  have  made  his  fortune  as  well  as  his  fame.  Why, 
then,  should  I  foist  theni  into  an  old  folio  when  they  would  have 
most  importantly  benefitted  myself  and  my  family  ?  The  charge 
is  ridiculous.  All  editors  of  Shakespeare  since  1852  have  been, 
more  or  less,  indebted  to  them  :  several  have  adopted  them,  most 
grudgingly  to  be  sure,  but  they  have  been  compelled  to  admit 
them.  The  Kev.  Mr.  Dyce,  the  latest  editor  (myself  excepted),  in 
spite  of  his  frequent,  merely  dogged,  adherence  to  the  exploded 
text,  without  a  single  reason  offered,  has  allowed,  under  his  own 
hand,  that  not  a  few  of  the  emendations  are  "so  admirable  that 
they  can  harcUij  he  conjectured T  He  must  pardon  me  for  once 
more  employing  his  very  words,  for  they  so  forcibly  express  my 
own  convictions,  and  indeed  almost  go  beyond  them,  that  I  cannot 
refuse  myself  the  satisfaction  of  quoting  them  whenever  an  occa- 
sion fairly  presents  itself. 

Of  Mr.  N.  E.  S.  A.  Hamilton  I  knew  nothing  until  I  saw  his  ac- 
cusatory epistle  in  the  Times  of  the  2nd  of  July  last ;  but  accord- 
ing to  the  specimen  before  me,  he  does  not  seem  very  well  qualified 


32 

for  the  office  of  a  literary  detective  :  he  speaks  on  behalf  of  himself 
and  ''his  colleagues,"  but  I  cannot  believe  that  all  of  them  feel 
anything  like  full  reliance  on  his  clianipionship.  For  myself  {mea 
culjia,  perhaps,)  I  never  even  heard  ot  him  ;  and  the  first  moment 
I  was  informed  that  he  was  attacking  me,  I  expressed  my  astonish- 
ment that  the  Manuscript  Department  of  the  British  Museum  had 
entrusted  such  a  cause  to  such  obscure  hands  ;  and,  I  own,  that  I 
not  very  judiciously  added  the  corrosive  couplet  of  the  satirist, — 

Some  cveatuves  ai-e  so  little  and  so  light, 
We  hardly  know  they  live,  until  they  bite. 

— I  did  not  wonder,  therefore,  that  he  should  eagerly  have  "  seiz- 
ed" the  opportunity"  of  obtaining  notoriety,  rather  than  distinc- 
tion, by  aiming,  without  the  slightest  notice,  a  deadly  blow  at  the 
character  of  a  literary  labourer,  who  has  spent  more  than  fifty 
years  especially  in  the  study  of  his  native  language  and  of  his 
native  writers. 

From  Sir  Frederic  Madden,  however,  with  whom  I  have  been  ac- 
quainted for  more  than  thirty  years,  with  whom  I  have  often  cor- 
responded, and  with  whom  I  have  exchanged  books,  I  looked 
for  rather  different  treatment.  It  is  true  that  in  a  note  to  me,  on 
a  different  subject,  in  November  last,  he  mentioned,  only  incident- 
ally, his  wish  to  see  the  Perkins  Folio.  1  answered  the  other  points 
of  his  communication  ;  but  this  !  postponed,  merely  because  the  pre- 
sent Duke  of  Devonshire  was  then  in  Lancashire,  and  because  I 
hoped  that  when  he  returned  to  London,  he  would  intrust  the  Per- 
kinst  Folio  to  my  hands  (which  had  gratefully  presented  it  to  \\\s 
noble,  condescending,  and  most  generous  predecessor),  and  that  I 
should  thus  be  able  myself  to  convey  it  to  the  British  Museum  and 
show  it  to  Sir  F.  Madden  %  In  the  mean  time  his  Grace,  the  pre- 
sent Duke,  had  confided  to  my  care  the  preparation  of  the  fac- 
simile of  the  'Hamlet'  of  16('4,  and  Sir  F.  Madden's  slight  expres- 
sion of  a  desire  to  inspect  the  Perkins  Folio  escaped  my  memory. 
I  never  dreamed  that  Sir  F.  Madden  would  consider  this  trifling 
neglect  as  a  personal  offence,  especially  after  he  had  got  over  the 
fact,  whicli  I  was  told  he  had  once  taken  seriously,  that  I  had  not, 
in  the  outset,  solicited  his  opinion  as  to  the  real  date  of  the  emen- 
dations. On  their  positive  and  intrinsic  value,  the  authorities  of 
the  British  Museum  (and  I  am  not  surprised  at  it)  do  not,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Hamilton,  pretend  to  an  opinion.  On  this  point,  there- 
fore, I  may  confidently  refer  them  to  the  JUev.  A.  Dyce. 

J.  Payne  Collier. 

%  Had  I  been  permitted  to  do  so,  or  had  I  been  asked  by  Sir  F.  Madden,  when  first  he 
obtained  the  volume  from  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  to  look  at  it  at  the  British  .Museum,  in 
order  that  I  might  see  if  it  were  precisely  in  the  same  state  as  when  I  irave  it  to  the  late 
Duke,  a  great  deal  of  trouble,  especially  about  the  pencil  marks,  might  iiave  been  saved. 
But  then  Mr.  Hamilton  would  have  been  deprived  of  the  opportunity  which  he  "  seized," 
of  making  a  book  and  bringing  himself  into  temporary  notice. 


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